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New blog post from Philip Hodgetts. Worth the read.
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[Walter Soyka] “He’s saying by using FCPX instead of FCP7, you can get the same results in only a quarter of the time!”
I thought he said, he had hard twice to four times as fast, then said, let’s call it twice as fast.
I never said it was 2x-4x fast for me, but maybe that’s just me.
Even twice as fast is bold, but we would have to start from beginning to end on a project. I have not done that so it’s hard to quantify for me. For me, it just is faster at a lot of tasks, Being able to use imported footage for one, organization/finding/viewing footage for two, previewing effects for three, text for four. I have no idea if that adds up to 2x as fast, but it’s all much faster.
[Walter Soyka] “Incidentally, this prediction on FCPX uptake cannot fail unless Apple pulls FCPX from the market. FCPX’s market share started at zero. Nowhere to go but up!”
How very astute!
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[Walter Soyka] “If you had made a specific and quantified claim, like getting comparable work done in a quarter of the time, why would it be hard to prove or at least describe in greater detail?”
Here, I’ll give you one. Being able to work natively with h264/AVCHD footage is way more than four times as fast, it’s probably 20-30 times faster, but that shouldn’t count.
Naming and organizing clips before/during/after import is another.
It’s the efficiencies of skimming, not moving tracks around, no clip collisions, basically everything that some people hate about the magnetic timeline that serves efficiency, is really hard to time and therefore prove, but it does make things go faster. As the blog post said 80% of the edit, 80% of the time.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “[Walter Soyka] “He’s saying by using FCPX instead of FCP7, you can get the same results in only a quarter of the time!”
I thought he said, he had hard twice to four times as fast, then said, let’s call it twice as fast.”
Here’s the line:
“They rethought the interface according to the philosophy outlined above – faster and more automated – and we have Final Cut Pro X. Let’s assume that it’s only twice as fast as Final Cut Pro 7. Some of that is simply because of a modern foundation that drops any requirement for transcoding or rendering effects, and that’s shared with other modern NLEs like Premiere Pro, Vegas, Media Composer and Edius. But some is because of the way the interface has been redesigned.”
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[Jeremy Garchow] “That was what I proposed, maybe you missed it.”
No, I didn’t miss it. I just don’t see it as practical. Think of how much of a RAM hog this becomes. Not to mention the human interaction required to set this up.
[Jeremy Garchow] “I have talked about how loading footage and adding metadata is really easy in FCPX”
I know you are arguing that it’s faster. It is when you stick to the limitations imposed by FCP X. Take for example custom notes. You can copy & paste these as groups in FCP 7 but not FCP X. Even the act of typing in custom info is slower in FCP X because every time you click on a clip the filmstrip has to be updated. That type of manual entry cannot be handled through metadata and is slower in FCP X.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Throw us editors a bone. At least give me scene/take. I don’t see how attaching scene/take to clips is a closed form of organization”
Too bad FCP X can’t actually read it. For example XML files from Alexa or Pomfort.
[Jeremy Garchow] “For now. Or do you think they are done developing it?”
Linking clips to an on-screen script is IP that belongs to Avid. As far as further development of SB… Who knows? No point in discussing unknowns, but I highly doubt much more effort will be put into it. The economics are faulty. I question whether enough FCP 7 – much less FCP X – users will buy SB. Most don’t have a clue what it can do and think it’s too expensive because they view it in the context of plug-in pricing. The nice thing is that it isn’t dependent on FCP, which is good. Banking any product or workflow on Apple is a bit of a gamble. Most of the developers who survived from the FCP “legacy” ecosystem were sent scrambling when FCP X came out, as most of their sales tanked.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “Here, I’ll give you one. Being able to work natively with h264/AVCHD footage is way more than four times as fast, it’s probably 20-30 times faster, but that shouldn’t count. Naming and organizing clips before/during/after import is another. It’s the efficiencies of skimming, not moving tracks around, no clip collisions, basically everything that some people hate about the magnetic timeline that serves efficiency, is really hard to time and therefore prove, but it does make things go faster. As the blog post said 80% of the edit, 80% of the time.”
I get that it’s hard to time any individual step, especially since there is not a 1:1 correspondence between tasks in FCP7 and FCPX.
However, it’s very doable to time a project from start to finish, which is presumably what’s behind this line: “As near as I can tell these people are doing the same sort of work on Final Cut Pro X as they were on Final Cut Pro 7 and finding that they get to a result from twice as fast to four times as fast. Twice as fast to four times as fast!”
If a new tool make you four times as productive, presumably you’d have some insight into the nature of the gains. Again, I am not making this up, “four times as fast” is a quote; PH assumes “twice as fast” later in the post for the sake of argument, but he did make four references to 4x or 400% in the article.
It’s not that I believe this is utterly impossible — it’s that I want to understand it better, because that kind of productivity gain is simply stunning.
If you can only get the same results 2x to 4x as fast in certain situations, let’s talk about what those situations are. If you can get the same results 2x to 4x as fast in virtually any situation, let’s talk about that too, and then even the most hateful of haters would switch.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Oliver Peters] “No, I didn’t miss it. I just don’t see it as practical. Think of how much of a RAM hog this becomes. Not to mention the human interaction required to set this up.”
Yeah, well FCPX isn’t being used in the TV shoes, either (or TV shows). This is all based an assumptions that things are going to work and work well.
[Oliver Peters] “Take for example custom notes. You can copy & paste these as groups in FCP 7 but not FCP X. Even the act of typing in custom info is slower in FCP X because every time you click on a clip the filmstrip has to be updated. That type of manual entry cannot be handled through metadata and is slower in FCP X.”
Not yet. Custom notes is part of the data that will be added during the edit as you watch it, but getting a roughly assembled cut might not need those notes to get an assembly.
[Oliver Peters] “Too bad FCP X can’t actually read it. For example XML files from Alexa or Pomfort.”
Not yet. Not yet.
[Oliver Peters] “As far as further development of SB… Who knows? No point in discussing unknowns, but I highly doubt much more effort will be put into it. “
really? Hmm. I guess if you add more functionality and make it available to a greater audience, that would mean more people can and would use it? I am thinking about buying it. This always comes up were we need to fudge a line/word and we have to look elsewhere to see if someone said it. RIght now we search the transcripts, it would be better if we could search the footage and link to it. I am waiting to see which NLE we end up on.
[Oliver Peters] “Most don’t have a clue what it can do and think it’s too expensive because they view it in the context of plug-in pricing. The nice thing is that it isn’t dependent on FCP, which is good. Banking any product or workflow on Apple is a bit of a gamble. Most of the developers who survived from the FCP “legacy” ecosystem were sent scrambling when FCP X came out, as most of their sales tanked.”
That’s a problem with the industry, anything over free is too expensive for most people. People complain about FCPX project/event management a lot, and they get pointed to Event Manger X, which is a really great solution. Someone inevitably asks, is there a free version?
Apple did not leave a popcorn trail for developers, there’s no question about that. It’s pretty terrible.
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[Walter Soyka] ” PH assumes “twice as fast” later in the post for the sake of argument, but he did make four references to 4x or 400% in the article.”
That was his reports from users. I don’t know who those people are, and I highly doubt they are editing each project twice on each NLE. I woudln’t do it, and I do know that there are many things in FCPX that are much faster, and it adds up. That’s all I can say for me.
[Walter Soyka] “If you can only get the same results 2x to 4x as fast in certain situations, let’s talk about what those situations are. If you can get the same results 2x to 4x as fast in virtually any situation, let’s talk about that too, and then even the most hateful of haters would switch.”
🙂 People can’t switch for everything as it simply doesn’t work with their infrastructure. No video out is a huge deal breaker among interchange. It wouldn’t make sense to go fast and then hit a giant roadblock just for the sake of speed.
Jeremy
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[Oliver Peters] “[Jeremy Garchow] “Throw us editors a bone. At least give me scene/take. I don’t see how attaching scene/take to clips is a closed form of organization”
Too bad FCP X can’t actually read it. For example XML files from Alexa or Pomfort.”
I should add (again), that P2 scene/take and other metadata material does come in, as FCP X reads the P2 XML. So the capability seems to be in the application, it just doesn’t seem to be available to the world yet.
Jeremy
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[Herb Sevush] “Can FCPX access the scene and take metadata that you can create using a KiPro? “
By the way, the Scene take info in the KiPro does not get saved to Quicktime as Quicktime doesn’t have that field.
If the KiPro generated an XML you could import to legacy, the information would get transferred.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “By the way, the Scene take info in the KiPro does not get saved to Quicktime as Quicktime doesn’t have that field.”
As an aside I must say that I can’t hate Quicktime enough. Most every time I had a problem with Legacy the issue often came down to Quicktime limitations, and now even with X, many of the limitations still seem to come from the Quicktime wrapper. How about Apple doing something useful and actually improving Quicktime itself.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf
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